These days, there are few few things to admire about the socialist, bankrupt and culturally degenerating USA, but at least so far, one thing remains: the right to bare [sic] arms and use deadly force to defend one’s self and possessions.

This will probably come as a total shock to most of my Western readers, but at one point, Russia was one of the most heavily armed societies on earth. This was, of course, when we were free under the Tsar. Weapons, from swords and spears to pistols, rifles and shotguns were everywhere, common items. People carried them concealed, they carried them holstered. . . .

This well armed population was what allowed the various White factions to rise up, no matter how disorganized politically and militarily they were in 1918 and wage a savage civil war against the Reds. It should be noted that many of these armies were armed peasants, villagers, farmers and merchants, protecting their own. If it had not been for Washington’s clandestine support of and for the Reds, history would have gone quite differently. .

Of course being savages, murderers and liars does not mean being stupid and the Reds learned from their Civil War experience. One of the first things they did was to disarm the population. From that point, mass repression, mass arrests, mass deportations, mass murder, mass starvation were all a safe game for the powers that were. The worst they had to fear was a pitchfork in the guts or a knife in the back or the occasional hunting rifle. Not much for soldiers. . . .

The excuse that people will start shooting each other is also plain and silly. So it is our politicians saying that our society is full of incapable adolescents who can never be trusted? Then, please explain how we can trust them or the police, who themselves grew up and came from the same culture?No it is about power and a total power over the people. There is a lot of desire to bad mouth the Tsar, particularly by the Communists, who claim he was a tyrant, and yet under him we were armed and under the progressives disarmed. Do not be fooled by a belief that progressives, leftists hate guns.

Oh, no, they do not. What they hate is guns in the hands of those who are not marching in lock step of their ideology. They hate guns in the hands of those who think for themselves and do not obey without question. They hate guns in those whom they have slated for a barrel to the back of the ear.

So, do not fall for the false promises and do not extinguish the light that is left to allow humanity a measure of self respect.

The post is well worth reading, and so are the comments that follow.

The great writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn made the point in The Gulag Archipelago (p.13, note 5):

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria [Government limo] sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur — what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt.

If . . . if . . . we didn’t love freedom enough. And even more- we had no awareness of the real situation. . . . The workers . . . were . . . simply not comprehending whom they still needed to be defended against and why they still needed any rights. . . . We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterwards.

Horrible examples of the consequences of disarmament can also be found in U.S. history. In his great concurring opinion inMacDonald, a case that protects citizens against state attack on their right to bear arms, Justice Clarence Thomas said:

Cruikshank ’s holding that blacks could look only to state governments for protection of their right to keep and bear arms enabled private forces, often with the assistance of local governments, to subjugate the newly freed slaves and their descendants through a wave of private violence designed to drive blacks from the voting booth and force them into peonage, an effective return to slavery. Without federal enforcement of the inalienable right to keep and bear arms, these militias and mobs were tragically successful in waging a campaign of terror against the very people the Fourteenth Amendment had just made citizens. . .

In my view, the record makes plain that the Framers of the Privileges or Immunities Clause and the ratifying-era public understood—just as the Framers of the Second Amendment did—that the right to keep and bear arms was essential to the preservation of liberty.

The trigger for the American colonists’ revolt at Lexington and Concord in 1775 was their belief that the British intended to seize their gunpowder, which would then enable the military to repress the populace at leisure.

My excellent colleagues have forgotten these bitter lessons of history. The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed—where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

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http://www.facebook.com/IsabelM.Matos Isabel Matos

Great Post!I just want to say I don’t own a gun because MY MOUTH shoots off more bullets than a firearm every could. That IS my weapon, along with a keyboard which I use to express my thoughts. I SUPPORT the SECOND AMENDMENT because IT IS VITAL to living in a tyranny-free society. Gun Control only helps Criminals, including BIG GOVT, find ways to use them, meanwhile, disarming the rest of us. This is designed to disarm and weaken citizens in a society. The right to bear arms is non-negotiable!

Excellent expose…..
we must not let history repeat itself ….especially when we know the consequences.

PAWatcher

History is the best teacher, liberty the best reward and God’s grace is the crowning glory.
This was a great, insightful and well presented post James V, your reference articles were right on point for the debate going on today about our right to bear arms. You won the debate IMHO.

Banda31

My spouse has been advising me for a few months now that I should buy a gun to protect myself. We recently got married but he does not live in this country. He implores me to get a gun, he cannot believe that I do not own a gun. So I’m thinking of getting one and then going to the shooting range to learn how to shoot properly. I feel strongly that in the near future we shall all be thankful that we had the foresight to arm ourselves in preparation for what is about to descend on us soon.

Polarbearpapa

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniencies attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

Thomas Jefferson

Patriot41

Lo-that the citizens of this nation, would hear the pleas and warnings of those who have experienced a repressive and criminal government. More human beings have been slaughtered on this earth by tyrannical governments, then all of the wars that have taken place, throughout the history of mankind.

When one thinks about the sixty million Chinese who were slaughtered by Mao, the twenty million slaughtered Russians by Stalin, the twelve million Jews by Hitler and all others who have been brought to their demise by heartless and evil demagogues, one would think that citizens would be very aware of what can happen when they refuse to face such reality. Yet, history continues to repeat itself and the potential of great people, ends up in the dustbin of history.

When selflessness in this country abounded, we became a great and prosperous nation. Now, selfishness abounds and we are headed for a very treacherous ending if, the citizens of this country do not wake up and take action to prevent further catastrophes. Politics has managed to divide our nation through class warfare and ideological differences, which further prevents unification of our nation. A divided nation will fall before an out of control govt., and that is exactly what we have at this point in time. Were the citizens of this nation to be disarmed, this govt., would take complete control and freely squash any resistance, of that there should be no doubt.

lanahi

I often wonder what changes in history would have been made if those countries overrun by tyrannts, domestic or foreign, had armed citizens. I’m thinking of the Nazis who invaded one country after another within a few days. Or the Polish or Hungarian uprisings against Russia. Would the Nazis have avoided these countries they simply walzed into if the citizens were armed? In Switzerland, nearly every home is armed.. no one bothers them even though it is a small country. The Japanese did not invade our mainland after disabling a good part of our Navy and our lack of preparation for war because they knew there were too many armed American citizens ready for them.

Our Revolution was won despite our ragtag army’s inability to arm itself adequately… private citizens had to bring their own guns to the fight, but they did because they all had them and knew how to use them. The Civil War would have lasted for a much shorter time if it weren’t for all those southerners who grew up with guns.

Now we are faced with another revolution, violent or nonviolent, and despite a well-equipped military (who are not on the whole supportive of this government, however), the government knows all those guns out there could stop them. They can do this with ANY guns, not just "assault weapons"…look at any guerilla movement in any country, and you know that one gun gets them many more weapons from the army they are fighting. So, "assault weapons" is just the start, with the ultimate goal of completely disarming civilians of even handguns. Every dictator does it ASAP.

JRNASH

Aside from the political and philosophical aspects of it all, just one of the practicalities here: I asked a friend that runs a liquor store how long it would be before he would be robbed, once such stores could not possess a gun. He said, "about an hour." "And would the robbers have guns?" I asked. "You could count on it," he said.

I wonder if Obama and his minions have given any thought at all to the armed robberies, the murders, and the extended crime wave that would follow their efforts to disarm the law abiding people in this country.

Patriot41

I doubt it seriously since they all have their own armed protection.

Patriot41

Banda if you are an unarmed woman, you need to buy some protection. We have a major security problem in this country that is threefold. First, we have the criminals on the street, who have become more emboldened since larger cities are unable to maintain an adequate law enforcement. Second, we have terrorist crossing our borders every day, who have total destruction of our people as their number one mission. Third, we have a govt., that is trying to disarm our citizens knowing the other two issues mentioned above, are getting worse.

Most counties provide some type of small arms training, usually coordinated with the Sheriffs department or local police. Instructors can advise you of what type of weapon you need for self preservation and then also guide you to a firing range for instruction and practice. I have taught my wife, my children and my grandchildren the proper use of firearms so that they will always have the capability to defend themselves. Your husband is right, get a weapon and become familiar on how to use it in self defense.

HuntingMoose

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Make videogames mandatory in schools, especially for girls who are most vulnerable.

They are excellent training tools in taking down an intruder and much better than the nonsense hollywood movies show their passive audience with impossible actions.

Since the coming of video games gun violence has gone down dramatically. Need more proof of the positive impact of giving people a nonviolent outlet to blow of some steam?

What should be banned are those mind altering drugs.

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2ysur

I agree, a Great Post, an enlightening post.

Reading the entire dissent written by Judge Alex Kozinski which you give reference to is a well written analysis of the Second Amendment which I think most all Americans would find it difficult to disagree with……and then wonder how anyone could misunderstand our Second Amendment.